Thursday, July 9, 2009

Right now, instead of what was listed before, each ilvl 245 item requires a Trophy of the Crusader token. This is in addition to the Emblems of Triumph tokens that they require, so items that cost 75 triumph emblems before also cost 1 Crusader token. These are soulbound, and as far as I can tell only one drops per boss on 25-man. 10-man does not drop this token.

ilvl 232 items are unchanged from prior prices, and are 33% less than their 245-ilvl counterpart.

And finally, each boss drops 3 emblems of triumph.

I know this is preliminary, and things can change. I also know that communication is good for actually getting things changed if they suck.

I'm...not thrilled with this idea of progression. For starters, it means that heroics and 10-man content have exactly the same access to gear, save that 10-man content rewards more badges so you'll get more gear quickly. But the actual gear? It's the same. This doesn't strike me as reasonable, but it's the same deal as it was in Naxxramas. If you liked that, you'll love this.

Second, it means that anyone who does 10-man content and 25-man content will gear up at about twice the rate that anyone who does only 25-man content will. Even if you get the tokens in 25-man, you still need those emblems - which means the token is worthless until you get enough tokens. That's not necessarily bad; it's essentially rewarding those people who do more to get more, and they get more of what they want. They can run 10-mans and instead of getting 'useless' tier tokens, they'll be getting closer to actual tier drops. That's kind of nice, actually.

Third, it means that doing daily heroics is (on a weekly basis) worth as much as doing all of the Argent Coliseum. There are 6-7 encounters that we know of (depending on how you count them) and if they all drop 3 emblems, that means 21 for a full clear. Which so happens to be exactly the amount of emblems you get from doing the dailies.

To put this in perspective, it costs 75 emblems + a trophy of the crusader token to get the high-end items like a tier chest piece. Someone who does nothing but 25-man content (assuming they clear it AND assuming they are in for every fight) will get that piece after 4 weeks.

Someone who does 10 and 25 man will get it after 2 weeks.Someone who does 10, 25, and every heroic they can will get it just a bit after one week.

Fourth, this absolutely fucks over guilds with people on backup, in terms of their loot. Because emblems are tied innately to actual gear they care about, sitting on backup means you're getting further and further behind on getting that tier gear. Even if you get the trophy of the crusader token, you'll have either saved for longer or have to wait for longer every time you sit on backup. DKP, EP/GP? None of that matters.

Blizzard has basically instituted a DKP system that is entirely based on attended amount of time in the raid. For some guilds that will be fine. For others that will seriously mess things up.

Fifth, I really hope more than one trophy of the crusader token drops per boss. Otherwise you're looking at 6-7 tier tokens possible per week. Compare to now, where you can get at least 10 tokens per week, and it's clearly a step back.

My biggest complaints about this are simply that it really rewards doing as much raiding as humanly possible, and somewhat punishes not doing so. It also does something that was never done before in raiding: it converts all tier loot into something like the Valanyr/Sulfuras questline, where instead of getting your gear immediately or getting your gear as a trade-in, you instead get your gear at some indeterminate time in the future depending on how many bosses you get in for and how many heroics you run.

Does this make sense? Is it fun? Does it help with progression when your tier tokens won't be obtainable for at least a couple weeks until you've received the token? If you're trying to gear up new people, does this help?

I do like that it gives the flexibility of getting whatever slot you want. The cost seems far too high.

So, suggestions on how to fix this? Let triumph tokens drop as they do now. Let the 232 ilvl stuff be the stuff that you can get from just running heroics. Let the 245 stuff be token-based only, similar to the 258 stuff, and have the tokens drop from both 10 and 25 man. Because like I said before, I don't care about whether or not 10-man loot and 25-man loot is differentiated at the tier level. But that's off the top of my head - I'm sure smarter folks are figuring this out now.

Look at simple Macro economics, this game exists because millions of people pay 15$ a month.

if you don't supply the masses with stuff, they will leave when the new shinney game comes along. which will ultimatly mean the top 5% hard core raiders, the 15% of raiders out there will be left with a "wtf , why do I play a game that adds nothing."

Seriously guys, if everyone's needs arent being met, no one is going to pay them to build new content.

OMG that Scrub is wearing the same thing as me. but you know what. he didnt have the same amount of fun either, he spent 500 run's into some heroic for his gear.

I don't think it's particularly fun to have to grind out badges to get to wear gear 'won' in 25-man raids. If you think that's fun, great for you. You're going to LOVE the new changes.

I don't care about what the other people around me wear. Seriously, you have some huge problem with reading; I deliberately stated, flat out, that it would be great to have 10 and 25-man content each drop the same token. How is that classism?

Here's the thing - what I'd like to do is be rewarded somewhat for running heroics. What I don't want is for heroics to be mandatory for me to earn 25-man gear at a reasonable pace.

What I'd like is for everyone to be able to do their choice of 10 or 25-man content without feeling insanely pressured to do the other. What I don't want is for people in 25-man guilds who don't have the time to do both 10 and 25-man raids (and heroics) to feel completely left behind in gearing.

As my wife said tonight, this solves all of the 'problems' that currently exist - no one doing heroics any more, gear imbalances, weird drop rates on tokens, etc. But it creates a whole slew of new ones.

I agree completely, although the changes do make it absolutely laughable to gear up my Paladin alt in whatever I'd like. A week of heroics and 10 man Naxx? I'll have gear nearly as good as my Druid, whom I've been raiding on for...how many years?

I realize that I'm going to sound like one of those assholes, but I'm starting to miss 40-man raid content. Why? Because when I earned a piece of gear after working on a boss for weeks on end, it felt like I had actually accomplished something grand. It was fun to be unique in that regard.

Lately, game mechanics/class changes have oscillated so wildly from patch to patch that I'm having a hard time caring. I suppose you could say that the game is losing its shine.

Seems bad to me too. I used to think it was bad game design giving hardcore raiders a valid reason to run ridiculously easy content (for them) in order to get gear upgrades. But, it wasnt that big a deal.

This makes is a much bigger deal now. I'm all for casuals having access to gear, and yes, its great for my alts too. But why should the hardcore find that the fastest way to get amazing gear upgrades, is to go back to ashenvale and kill 400 foozles a week? its a terrible design.

I too, wonder if wow has lost its shine. Technically its still beautiful and flawless relative to many other games. But I'm talking about it's spirit, it's heart. I'm also starting to care less and less, and as we've seen, when a game looses its edge for the leading minority, it starts to slowly fall into obscurity for everyone.

The essential problem is that it creates a huge rift between no-lifers and hardcore raiders who simply carve out the needed time to run the 25man raids each day.

Atm I raid around 20h of 25man raids and maybe 6-8h of 10man raids per week. My total playing time in the game? Maybe 30h per week.

With this change I'd have to further increase my total playing time to be able to keep up with my guilds gearing curve.

Not to mention the headache this means for gearing alts, essentially meaning my alts would never get around to getting t9 gear since there's never going to be a day when I have the time to do this kind of farming anew for a 2nd or 3rd toon, which again locks me(someone who "enjoys" switching chars at times as the guilds needs change) into playing only one char for the rest of WotLK.

As it is my guild could decide they need another feral druid/resto druid/oomkin/enha shaman/ele shaman/resto shaman and simply ask me to jump over to my alt, run a couple weeks of 10/25mans with them and expect to be geared to the teeth by the time we're done. This allows returning players to be geared up fast, this allows new recruits to be geared up fast, this allows rerolls, it allows limited roster guilds to use alts to attempt ridiculous stacking hard modes(5 warlocks for alone in the darkness? seriously?)...in general it means the guild has more control over how to utilize their collective benefits from their raiding.

I thought tier was supposed to be there to help ease transition between gear levels, to make sure there was more general gear so even if no leather caster loots dropped all run you could still bid on the tier piece, but apparently now waiting for the RNG to come up in your favour becomes the easiest way to get the next level of your gear...

Even as a casual raider I am aghast at this. I was glad to finally get my rep grinds done, I am 8 bosses in to Ulduar, I don't have a ton of work to do in the game. But now? They don't want to just give the choice of getting gear faster, they want me to feel forced to do it.

Giving the choice of getting emblems was probably enough incentive for people to go back. But this will make many feel forced to. So now "hardcore" will feel like they have to to compete, and "casual" will have to also put more hours in to get emblems just so they can spend their token.

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.